《书评》夷则十六

3、The Old Man and the Sea

　　The Old Man and the Sea
　　A man can be destroyed but not defeated
　　——The Old Man and the Sea
　　The author of the Old Man and the Sea is Ernest Miller Hemingway. Before reviewing this book, I would like to say something about Hemingway in my eyes. Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in the United States. He served in World War I in 1918, when he was only 19 years old, and became an ambulance driver. However, not long after he joined the army, he was injured on the battlefield, but he did not care about the injuries, and tried his best wto sent wounded soldiers back to the ambulance station. This experience had a great influence on Hemingway. He experienced the war himself and thought about the meaning of war in his life. According to Hemingway later recalled, death was everywhere on the battlefield. This experience on the battlefield also contributed to Hemingway\'s unique writing style. Hemingway\'s works are always very calm on the surface, the words are very simple, there is little pompous rhetoric, just plain narration. I did not even encounter many new words and other obstacles in the process of reading. But like Hemingway\'s famous iceberg theory, what he wrote in the book is only one eighth, and the remaining seven eighth is for the reader to imagine.
　　There was an old man who had not caught a fish for more than eighty days, so he was laughed at by others, and only a small child kept him company. His life was very poor, but he was not depressed. He decided to go to the sea to catch a big fish. He managed to catch a fish bigger than his boat, but the fish kept struggling, even dragging the boat in the sea for two days and two nights. In the heat of the fight, the old man\'s hand was badly hurt by the fishing line, but he did not let go. He was afraid to sleep and had to eat raw fish to satisfy his hunger. In the process of fighting with the big fish, he gradually admired the big fish, and he never gave up the struggle. At last he defeated the big fish, but the fish\'s blood attracted the sharks. The sharks came to eat the bodies of the big fish. The old man used everything around him to kill the sharks, but the sharks kept coming. Finally, the exhausted old man returned to the shore with only the bone of a fish.
　　In fact, the story of the old man and the sea of this book we have long been very familiar with, because this book is required reading in middle school, and there is a text in the Chinese textbook selected from the Old Man and the Sea. When I read this book for the first time in junior high school, I thought the story was very boring. I did not imagine the seven-eighths of the iceberg hidden under the water surface. Perhaps it is because of the richness of life experience and the growth of age, when I read the Old Man and the Sea this time, I felt something different, which is a kind of shock to the soul. The old man gave me a faith that never give up when we face life’s setbacks. This faith will also guide me to the future of my life.
　　Draw strength from suffering and courage from struggle.

作者有话说

　　还挺震撼的